Following our recent webinar, How to improve your fund factsheets: practical lessons from 200+ reviews, we received a number of thoughtful questions from attendees about what makes a factsheet genuinely useful to investors. In this follow-up Q&A, we share responses to the questions we couldn’t get to during the webinar and include the responses we did get to. We explore some of the key themes raised during and after the session, including risk disclosure, commentary, scoring methodology, usability and the role of process in producing clearer, more effective fund factsheets.

Unanswered during the webinar

Question 1: What does good use of risk disclosure as an asset look like?

Most factsheets treat risk disclosure as a compliance obligation; a box that must be ticked. Rather, it should be seen as part of a broader obligation to pass on important and useful information to the investor. The factsheets that do it well flip that approach entirely. They use a visual risk scale or spectrum so an investor can immediately self-locate, without having to read dense paragraph text.

They use English narrative that explains what the key risks actually mean in the context of that specific fund, not generic boilerplate about market risk and currency fluctuation that could apply to almost anything.

The reviewed Carmignac factsheet is a good example of this done well. The risk scale is clear, prominent and visually integrated into the design rather than buried in a footer. Premier Miton’s reviewed factsheet (UK Smaller Companies) takes this further, as well as a brief description under the risk and reward scale in their factsheet, they also have an entire section on general risks and specific fund risks.

When risk disclosure is treated as part of the investor experience rather than a legal footnote, it builds confidence. It signals that the manager understands their audience and is not trying to obscure anything. That is what we mean by treating it as an asset.”

Question 2: Is commentary worth the time to market cost?

“One of the fundamental purposes of publishing fund factsheets to distributors, investors and would-be investors is that of communication. With that in mind it is hard to over-state the importance of the opportunity to impart information that is relevant, informative and useful to those who need it when they need it. Therefore, all included commentary should be made available against that background, and in particular, that of the need to know.

Firms that have successfully structured and streamlined commentary-oriented workflow with automated population of the data context around it, with clear sign-off points can turn commentary around in a fraction of the time. The cost in time to market is largely a process consideration rather than an inherent aspect of commentary itself.

Delays and bottlenecks are less about whether to include commentary and more about how it is produced and approved.
Note also that for active, conviction-led strategies where the manager’s thinking is part of the product proposition, commentary should not be optional. Investors and distributors want to understand how the manager is interpreting investment conditions and whether the portfolio is behaving as expected.”

Question 3: Is there significant variation in the cost of factsheet production?

Each factsheet provider business will necessarily have its own pricing bases, so it seems more likely than not that there will be variations in price points. Similarly, it is almost a given that proposition considerations and the ability to deliver benefits that are important to your current and projected circumstances will vary significantly too. All of which makes is clear that price, and its surrounding factors warrant more than a cursory look.

The short and direct answer therefore is, yes, we do have insights into the factors around costs of factsheet production; but also, that it is inevitable that there would be significant variation in factsheet providers’ price points.

The question of factsheet production cost is broad, multi-faceted and worthy of focused treatment.

• Some factors are less obvious but impact cost throughout a project lifecycle (implementation through to service fees) and this should be kept in mind;
• there is much to be examined and discussed around the Total Cost of Ownership, TCO of solutions
• there are considerations around reporting cycle risks and error rate mitigation.

To comment more broadly: we are often asked for guidance (and at times to advise) on what makes an effective fund factsheet.

Therefore, the prime objective of this research was to carry out an in-depth review of the fund factsheets space. In order to address that question of effectiveness we focused on the role that factsheets play in investor-centred communication. That is to convey information to the investor that is relevant, timely and easy to access.

Also, as part of this research, we wanted to include key observations as well as actionable takeaways that would benefit those responsible for fund factsheets.

There are many aspects to fund factsheet production. On this occasion we have focused on their role in effective investor-centred communication.

Perhaps on a future occasion we might look in depth at aspects such as production cost.

Answered during the webinar

Question 4: Where can I access the full report and see which factsheets were in the top 10?

The full report, including the Top 10 list, is available on our website here.

Question 5: Why did you include a qualitative component in the scoring?

The initial quantitative scoring gave the review its rigour. It allowed each factsheet to be measured against the same yardstick: whether the data was complete, whether costs were clearly disclosed, whether the risk section was findable, and whether the document was doing the right things from a technical perspective.

But a factsheet can pass those tests and still feel like a compliance document rather than a communication tool. It can be technically correct, but still feel flat, dense, or difficult for an investor to absorb.

The quantitative score tells you which factsheets built a solid house. The qualitative score tells you which ones built a home. It reflects the overall user experience of the factsheet: how it feels, how it flows, how easy it is to use, and whether it genuinely helps the investor understand the information in front of them.

The factsheets that made the top 10 stood out on both dimensions. Without the qualitative element, the review would have rewarded technical compliance rather than genuine excellence in investor communication.

Question 6: What was the single most common usability shortcoming across the factsheets reviewed?

The most frequent issue was poor information hierarchy. Many factsheets looked polished, but did not guide the reader’s eye in a logical or intuitive order.

Related to this was an over-reliance on tabular exhibits where a simple chart would often have communicated the same information more immediately and made it easier for the investor to interpret at a glance.

The good news is that these issues are among the easiest to fix. They do not necessarily require a redesign. In many cases, a fresh look at how information is sequenced and presented, the addition of more white space, and a rethink of exhibit types can make a substantial difference to how usable the factsheet feels without changing the basic structure or design.

Question 7: Did design and content carry equal weight, or did one take priority over the other?

They were weighted equally by design. That was a deliberate choice.

In the quantitative phase, the 80 points were split across four pillars, each carrying 20%: design, data accuracy and completeness, clarity of information, and layout and usability. Pure visual design therefore accounted for one quarter of that score. The remaining three quarters were concerned with content: what is included, how clearly it is expressed, and how usable the information actually is.

The scoring was structured in this way because polish should not be rewarded at the expense of substance. A beautifully designed factsheet that obscures fees, skips proper risk disclosure, or leaves investors unclear about who the fund is for is still failing, regardless of how good it looks.

At the same time, factsheets should not be treated purely as data exercises. A technically complete factsheet that is visually impenetrable is equally failing the investor. Clarity of information and layout and usability are content categories, but they are deeply intertwined with how information is designed and presented.

The short answer is that design and content carried equal weight by intent. A truly great factsheet has to get both right. The factsheets that made the top 10 did exactly that, and the gap between the lower and higher rankings largely came down to how well firms had integrated content quality with design quality rather than treating them as separate workstreams.

Question 8: Why was risk disclosure the lowest scoring subcategory, and what does good look like?

The issue is that risk disclosure has historically been treated as a compliance obligation rather than a communication opportunity. It is often treated as something that simply has to be included, rather than something that could genuinely help the investor.

That tends to result in disclosures that are technically present but buried, written in dense language, and disconnected from the rest of the narrative.

The best-performing factsheets approached risk differently. Their risk content was easy to find, written in plain English, and, crucially, contextualised. Rather than listing risk factors in isolation, they related them directly to the investor. What does the risk mean for them? How does it connect with the fund strategy?

That shift from statement to narrative is more useful for investors and arguably represents a stronger position from a regulatory standpoint too.

Whether you attended our webinar or not, if this article has sparked questions within you about fund factsheet production, we’d be delighted to hear from you and happy to discuss them. Please contact us at solutions@factbook.co.uk.